James Baldwin Influences On His Writing Essay

James Baldwin: Influences On His Writing Essay, Research Paper

By using realistic parallels to actual human qualities of his audience and himself, James Baldwin is able to add useful conflict to his plays. Baldwin enforces his plots through discovery of his characters and his own identity. He allows his audience to become part of the story by giving them reason to identify with his characters or himself.In order for a drama to be successfully written, it must contain conflict. For a play dealing with family to be victorious it must have either external conflict between characters and a cultural issue or internal conflict within the family as its main issue, or plot. For a play dealing with such issues as race or sexuality it must also include conflict, it might be incorporated through development of events that may have occurred in history. These events would serve to create a believable story or plot, and help the reader relate with the issues at hand.Baldwin incorporates an interpersonal struggle between characters in The Amen Corner, which helps create a powerful family drama that will relate to its audiences because of its honesty and real-life plot. “The Amen Corner, written in 1952, is a religious and highly personal play taken from the author’s experience within the church and examining the conflict between religious dogmatism and individual responsibility.” James’s stepfather, David Baldwin married his mother three years after James was born. He worked as a laborer in a New York factory and just barely supported his new family. His first son Samuel, who was nine years older than James received the majority of David’s love. Consequently, when Sam left home because of hatred toward his father James was left with a stepfather who blamed and hated him. James was left alone to care for his two brothers and five sisters as his mother worked at night cleaning office buildings.As a child growing up in a northern black ghetto, Baldwin was ugly and pathetic. He was ridiculed by his fellow classmates and made to feel regretful of his race by his friends and his stepfather. James was always a simple child with very little to express verbally due to the persecution he received at home. Partly to please his father and partly to escape from the solitude that his youth was bringing to his life, James, at the age of only fourteen became a pastor in a local church: The Firestone Pentecostal Assembly in Harlem.James’ stepfather, also a preacher for a local Baptist church grew more jealous and hateful toward his son as he threw himself farther into a relationship with God at such a young age. James began to associate with other members of the church, many of them not African Americans. This further angered his father.At the age of seventeen, James retreated from the church with much learned, mostly negative, about his feelings toward others. “This religious retreat of nearly three years made (Baldwin) understand his hate and his new need to wreak vengeance upon whites and even God.” After nearly six years of managing his junior high school and his high school’s newspapers and building upon his literary skills that he had always shown, James graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx in January of 1942.Just one year later on the same date that James’ youngest sister Paula Marie was born, his unloved stepfather died of Tuberculosis in a Long Island hospital. With little emotional feeling toward his father’s death, James was left with many family duties as the oldest of the three brothers. “James Baldwin had to face the harsh reality of the world with courage in order to support a family of which he was very proud.” James’ family consisted of George, born in 1927; Barbara, born in 1929; Wilmer, born in 1930; David born in 1931; Gloria born in 1933; Ruth was born in 1935, and Elizabeth in 1937; Paula Maria, the youngest child was born in 1943.After graduating from high school and understanding that he would be the sole moneymaker for his family, Baldwin searched for work in the New York area. His work in a New Jersey Railroad factory brought about Notes of a Native Son. This was a very angry time in James’ life. He wrote about his rage toward whites when his rights and those of other blacks were denied. Working as a cook in a Greenwich Village restaurant, Baldwin was able to support his family and avoid the draft during World War II.In 1948, Baldwin left the United States for France. He confessed to Margaret Mead in 1971, “I left because I wanted to live”. Earlier that year, Baldwin’s close friend Eugene Worth had committed suicide due to his lack of faith living as an artist in New York. Baldwin related to Worth and the struggles that he faced. He knew that something needed to be done to jump-start his life and escape his death.Baldwin’s character and attitude changed during his first few years in Paris. He became a friend with Lucian Happersberger and through his harsh words in his essay, “Everybody’s Protest Novel” ended his long time relationship that he had had with Richard White.”This resounding literary debut was obvious proof that the young black writer from Harlem had already begun to reflect on himself in particular and on the black problem in general.” In France, he was able to turn around and write about issues he had faced in America, from a comfortable and objective distance. Living with Happersberger in the Swiss Alps during 1952, James wrote Go Tell it on the Mountain befo